From Embers to Fire: Sholay: The Final Cut at the Plaza Theatre

I walked into the lobby of the Plaza Theatre with one question in mind: “How does a film that's embedded in the psyche of every Indian and the hearts of foreign film lovers reinvent itself 50 years later?”

I was about to see a larger-than-life film that I'd only previously squinted at on grainy broadcasts on Doordarshan and bootleg VHS tapes from Jackson Heights. My memories of Gabbar Singh's sneer, RD Burman's compositions, and the mythic Ramanagara hills weren't just my earliest memories of cinema, but something I'd inherited as a member of the South Asian diaspora.

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Marquee at the historic Plaza Theatre, Atlanta Georgia, January 10th 2026.

But I didn't know that the original 70mm prints had vanished and the camera negative was destroyed by vinegar syndrome. That for decades, we'd been watching a Sholay that was diminished, cropped, and fading.

It took three years of concerted effort by the Film Heritage Foundation, digging up artifacts across warehouses in Mumbai and London, to finally rediscover Ramesh Sippy's complete vision. Thanks to Reel Friends and Videodrome, Atlanta audiences got to see "the greatest story never told" on the big screen. This restoration featured the original ending, deleted scenes that haven't been screened since 1975, in its intended 2.2:1 aspect ratio with remixed stereophonic sound.

Before the lights dimmed, filmmaker Akshay Bhatia took the stage to explain what we were about to see. He spoke about the Herculean task of bringing classic Indian cinema to American theaters: tangled rights, degraded prints, India's own lack of preservation funding. Since 2013, most people had encountered Sholay through a bastardized 3D conversion with added VFX and missing scenes. Tonight was different. Tonight was Film Heritage Foundation's three-year labor made visible.

Then the lights went off and the swelling theme filled the hall. Stragglers rushed to find the remaining few seats.

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Curtains at the Lefont Auditorium at Plaza Theatre.

And there they were: Amitabh and Dharmendra, criminals with hearts of gold, dashing across traintops and scheming in jails. Jai, the brooding loner and Veeru, the charming rascal won our hearts with a coin toss. Watching Dharmendra's grin fill the screen felt different this time. He'd passed away just a month before, having called Sholay "the 8th wonder of the world." In his oeuvre of over 300 films, perhaps the most iconic scene features Veeru driving the motorcycle with Jai in the sidecar, harmonizing about "Yeh Dosti"—a friendship that death itself couldn't break.

Then the rust-red cliffs of Ramanagara filled the frame and I understood what we'd been missing. The color saturation transformed the cliffs from backdrop to its own character and surreal presence. I'd seen Sholay dozens of times, but I'd never seen it. This was the fire I'd only known as embers.

It was also my first time watching Sholay after seeing many of films that influenced it, like Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (1954), Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), George Roy Hil’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). The bones are there: revenge plot, buddy dynamics, iconic villain. But what transforms borrowed structure into something entirely Sholay is precisely what Western audiences expect from Bollywood: the songs, the dances, the color, the masala. And the film delivers: every musical number is spectacular and every dance sequence stops time.

During intermission I spoke excitedly with old fans and newcomers to Hindi cinema alike. After refilling our snacks, we settled back for a second half of the 198 minutes that packs even more action, more explosions, and two devastating dance numbers that seemingly encode the film's entire moral universe. Anyone who took a bathroom break during these "non-action scenes" missed critical parts of the plot and the gender politics as executed by P.L. Raj's masterful choreography.

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Helen and Jalal Agha seducing daicots & audiences alike in the RD Burban-sung “Mehbooba Mehbooba.”

“Mehbooba Mehbooba" announces itself with a unique instrument: the sound of air blown into a half filled Coca-Cola bottle. The iconic guitar riff invites in Helen, clad only in green sequins and characteristic vamp, to bathe in the warm lamplight that the restoration renders into perfect amber. The close-ups fragment Helen’s body: face, hips, hands, feet. Her musician companion, Jalal Agha on rabab, nearly dances himself out of the screen on scraped knees and haunches, the instrument inseparable from his body. His movements mirror Helen's rhythm, creating another layer of male performance and gaze. He watches her while performing for her, Gabbar watches them both, the henchmen watch transfixed at the three of them, and we, sitting in the Plaza's darkness, watch it all. The 4K restoration makes our complicity inescapable: we see Helen in forensic detail, fragment her body just as the camera does. We become the dacoits in the lair, unable to look away. The restored stereophonic sound made every rabab string vibrate through the theater, RD's breathing audible between repetitions of "mehbooba, mehbooba," the atmosphere so thick you could feel it. We weren't safely watching from outside. We were in Gabbar's den.

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Basanti fights for Veeru’s life in Gabbar’s den, with impeccable blood-stained footwork.

And we return back to the lair again, except this time, the afternoon sun blazes above, almost as if the lights came back on in the hall. In "Jab Tak Hai Jaan" (Til I have life left in me), we marvel at the range of Hema Malini's performance. Gabbar has captured Veeru and gives Basanti an impossible choice: dance until you collapse or watch him die. On the big screen, we saw in brutal clarity the sunlight catching each shard, dust kicked up by bloodied feet, sweat and heat exhaustion. P.L. Raj's choreography keeps the camera pulled back, showing Basanti's full body while Lata Mangeshkar's voice carries her desperation. In contrast to Helen’s item girl costume, Basanti is covered in modest ghagra choli, but with her whole heart exposed. We watch horrified this spectacle of coercion, love, sacrifice.

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"Kitne aadmi the?” (How many men were there?), Gabbar asks his henchmen. He doesn’t like their answer.

Despite how he sits around watching Helen and Hema Malini’s characters iwth glee, Amjad Khan's Gabbar Singh doesn’t just demand performances from others. His entire presence is choreography. The oft-quoted Russian roulette scene with Kalia: "Bahut yaad aayenge yeh teri" (You'll be dearly remembered), punctuated by rhythmic gun spins, life and death as performance art. Every confrontation follows brutal choreographic logic. Perhaps he's the most masterful dancer in the film the way he makes everyone dance to violence, to fear, and to his whims.

In 4K, Khan's menace transcends into the monstrous. His blackened teeth as sinister as the Ramanagara hills behind him. Every villainous micro-expression—the slight eyebrow raise, the slow grin, the way he tilts his head before violence - is blown up to Asuras-like proportions.

Violence has its own rhythm in Sholay. From the balletic jumps of the train robbery, to the sparse drumbeats Thakur’s tragedy, and the cacophony of the climactic shootout - they follow choreographic logic. Our heroes Jai and Veeru themselves move in practiced tandem, much like a coin-toss. The violence Gabbar choreographed throughout the film demanded a choreographed conclusion.

And then there's the ending itself, which audiences haven't seen since 1975. Indian censors, reeling from The Emergency, insisted on softening Gabbar's fate for decades. The restoration includes Sippy's original vision.

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Poster for the Atlanta screening of Sholay.

I won't spoil the ending. But I'll say this: just as the 4K made Gabbar more menacing, it also renders his fate more satisfying. There's a logic and catharisis that the censored version could never provide.

You'll have to see it yourself to understand why the theater erupted.

Sholay: The Final Cut isn't a completely different film than the one many of us grew up watching. But seeing the restoration was watching chaand sitaaron se nikla—the moon finally emerging from stars. The same story finally allowed to shine at full intensity.

But it didn't reach us overnight. This infrastructure, from archivists hunting elements for three years to Reel Friends and Videodrome bringing films like this to the Plaza, survives only if we show up. These screenings represent a commitment to international cinema that most American cities don't have. And there are hundreds of classics like this, films we think we know but have only watched on degraded formats. Mother India. Pyaasa. Mughal-e-Azam. Beloved films waiting for someone to care enough to bring to new audiences. But when get off the couch, battle Atlanta traffic, and invite friends who've never seen Bollywood cinema, we ensure that future audiences also get to see these sholay (embers) become aag (fire).

The Disappearing American: Bob Dylan, Pennebaker, and when Cinema Vérité went Electric

I saw Dont Look Back on the big screen at the Plaza Theatre as part of D.A. Pennebaker's 100th birthday celebration. Andy Ditzler, curator of Atlanta's Film Love series, warned that Dylan was a "slippery" subject and Pennebaker's apostrophe-less cinéma vérité portrait wasn't as straightforward as it seemed.

It was a rare chance to see the 1965 British acoustic tour, mere months before Dylan infamously went electric at Newport Folk Festival. Pennebaker's handheld cameras and sync-sound dropped us into hotel rooms, backseat night drives, and smoke-thick press scrums, building a portrait not of what happened but of what slipped away.

It was a different fanfare than what the film debuted to in 1967. Dont Look Back initially struggled to find distribution until picked up by a San Francisco theatre owner who specialized in adult entertainment. Pennebaker famously quipped that he barely knew Dylan when he started filming. "The filmmaking is the research," he said. "You don't ever research, because you want to have everything come to you in a life way." Most people in our theater probably knew more about Dylan than the director himself had in 1965. As the lights dimmed, the audience sat transfixed for a convergence of two revolutions—when cinéma vérité went electric.

The first thing we see is not a stage but an alleyway. Dylan drops cue cards for "Subterranean Homesick Blues" while Allen Ginsberg and Bob Neuwirth murmur in the background. The proto music video feels casual, almost tossed‑off. But it's a prophecy, or a "sermon," as a journalist later says. The words flutter and fall, impossible to hold. Pennebaker recalled years later that no one held on to the legendary cards. They were lost to the elements. Dylan slips out of reach.

There's something voyeuristic about the entire experience, as if we're witnessing moments never meant for public consumption. Britain greets Dylan like he’s a visiting comet. The airports buzz with screaming fans, BBC reporters demand explanations, and upper-middle-class politicians invite him to their mansions. Onstage, he is incandescent as he strums familiar songs into something mystical. Offstage, he shrinks and bristles from the weight of his persona. You can see why Pennebaker hesitated to call himself the director. "It was more directed by the people who were in it." But the film's real genius lies in how it builds a portrait out of disappearances. Two figures become its unspoken ghosts: Donovan and Joan Baez.

The specter of Donovan

Donovan haunts this film without ever really being in it. The young Scottish musician is invoked constantly—by journalists, by other musicians, always with that undercurrent of rivalry. The British press had crowned him the "new Dylan" and you can feel the tension of that comparison straining through every conversation.

When Donovan finally appears, it's in a dim hotel room, strumming "To Sing for You" with nervous fingers. The song trembles more than it plays. Dylan then takes the guitar and offers "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" (at Donovan's request), enunciating the end of each line with quiet, devastating finality.

What makes this scene so unsettling is its deliberation. Donovan doesn't look humiliated, but like he's playing along with some predetermined script. There's something theatrical about the whole encounter, as if both men know their roles in this performance. Pennebaker lingers on Donovan's face not to capture defeat, but to document the moment when a real person dissolves into symbol.

The irony deepens when you learn that the two had spent considerable time together off-camera—sharing dinners and collaborating on those famous cue cards for the opening sequence. But that friendship gets edited out of existence, leaving only this single, loaded moment where Donovan becomes an echo whose presence only amplifies the weight of the original.

Joan Baez, a fading heartbeat

If Donovan represents the phantom of imitation, Joan Baez embodies the whisper of intimacy. Early in the tour, she radiates serene warmth. She makes goofy faces while sitting cross‑legged on hotel beds and sings ethereally as "Bobby" types away with yet another cigarette in his mouth. There's a tenderness between them that feels genuine, unguarded.

But something shifts as the film progresses. Dylan becomes more distant, more absorbed in his own performance of being Dylan. As Baez begins to drift from the frame, you realize you're watching a breakup in real time, though neither participant wants to acknowledge it directly.

The late‑night hotel scenes grow starker without her cheerful warbles. They harden into echo chambers filled with press hangers-on and Dylan's increasingly sharp wit. Her departure is never explained, but it's felt in every empty armchair. She represents not just lost love, but an abandonment of earnest folk tradition in which Dylan believed music could change the world through sincerity alone.

By film's end, both ghosts have done their work. Baez disappears entirely, and we learn later that they wouldn't perform together again until a decade later, during the Rolling Thunder Revue. She becomes the ghost of who Dylan was expected to remain.

Dylan withdraws behind the shades

Dylan's confrontations throughout the film with earnest student journalists, Time magazine reporters, and anyone else demanding explanations serve as exercises in self-preservation. He's protecting something fragile from being pinned down and categorized. Pennebaker later observed that Dylan treated these encounters like "some sort of comic show of misperceptions." He deflects every attempt to reduce him to soundbites, refusing to explain himself to those who don't already understand. We watch him read aloud from a newspaper article claiming he smokes eighty cigarettes a day. "I'm glad I'm not me," he smiles wryly. In a moment of startling self-awareness, Dylan recognizes that the public version of himself has become someone he wouldn't want to know.

At one point, someone calls him "the disappearing American" for how quickly he vanishes after shows. We realize something's missing from Dylan by the film's end. And it wasn't just the apostrophe in the title of Dont Look Back. That missing punctuation feels like a deliberate refusal to make things conventional or easy. As Pennebaker later admitted, "I got tired of everything looking like everything else. And I thought, Fuck it." Like Dylan himself, even the film's title resists standard expectations. Watching this in a packed theater made the solitude even starker. Laughter at the early press‑conference jabs gave way to uncomfortable silence as the film spiraled inward.

Dont Look Back isn’t just another music documentary of the defiantly undefinable singer. This is Pennebaker’s ghost story unfolding in hotel rooms, in the spaces between songs, and in the people who disappear before the credits roll. The film refuses to explain its own melancholy take on fame. By the time we see this footage, Dylan had already transformed multiple times—married, electric, booed at Newport. By the time his car disappears down the street, you realize that version of Dylan is already gone, heading somewhere the camera couldn't follow.

Works Cited

Ayd, Justin. "Through Pennebaker's Lens: Bob Dylan Dont Look Back." Walker Art Center, Nov 16, 2018.

Itzkoff, Dave. "No Direction, No Restriction: D.A. Pennebaker Looks Back at a Dylan Documentary." The New York Times, May 19, 2016.

Mettler, Mike. "D.A. Pennebaker on 50 Years of Bob Dylan: Dont Look Back, Part II." Sound and Vision, Nov 27, 2015.

Polito, Robert. "Dont Look Back." Criterion Collection, 2021.

Simmons, Michael. "Making Bob Dylan's Dont Look Back: 'There was a story there – I could feel it in my bones.'" MOJO, 2019.

Williams, John. "D.A. Pennebaker, Pioneer of Cinéma Vérité in America, Dies at 94." The New York Times, Aug 3, 2019.

Cheongsams and Cigarettes: The Visual Poetry of Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love

“You notice things if you pay attention.”

I was pleasantly surprised to be directed to The Rej, one of the smaller, more intimate rooms at the Plaza Theatre for the 25th anniversary restoration of In the Mood for Love. With only about twenty people in the room, it just felt right. This isn’t a film meant to be consumed at scale. We’re meant to overhear whispers that pass through walls, to catch glimpses through slivers in doorways.

I sat in the back row and searched for an opening between the heads in front of me. There are portals everywhere in this film. Of course, the literal ones: windows, mirrors, curtain cracks, alleyways. But also metaphorical apertures, especially in the small, unspoken rituals that epitomize Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan’s relationship. It’s impossible to miss these moments; the world slows down and the music swells. Furtive glances near the noodle shop. Missed footsteps. I didn’t realize I’d been holding my breath along with them. Like Wong Kar-wai’s other work, this film hinges on something that escapes language. Its essence isn’t memory, but the potential of memory. The almosts.

It’s 1962, and Hong Kong here is not yet the neon metropolis it would become. It’s a city lit from within, by lampshades, amber bulbs, hallway fluorescents that flicker with emotional residue. The lighting doesn’t spotlight the characters so much as gleam around them, as if their longing emits heat.

That incandescence is most literal in Maggie Cheung’s expressions and her cheongsams, which shift with each scene like emotional timestamps. She moves through them with fluid precision, as if built from memory and mirage. “She dresses up like that to go out for noodles?" Her neighbors murmur in her wake.  

Tony Leung, too, is impeccably composed. Viewers oscillate between his tailored suits and his studied stillness like a plume of smoke. He’s aware of the whispers. “There's nothing between us,
but l don't want gossip.” But we wouldn’t fault Mrs. Chan’s if there was. Has anyone ever looked this good with a cigarette in his hand?

Their chemistry is painfully attuned. They rehearse catching their partners in infidelity, share cab rides, lean ever so slightly toward one another without touching. You don’t watch them fall in love. You see love take shape in the distance between them as the rain covers the city streets. 

Their world tightens with each passing day: Hallways narrow. Stairwells steepen. Rooms echo with the offscreen noise of neighbors drunkenly playing mahjong. But silence doesn’t have anywhere to go either. It breeds ambient suffocation rather than intimacy. Like the moody wallpaper of the hotel room where they escape, their feelings burn like incense—slowly, inward.

“Feelings can creep up just like that. I thought I was in control,” Mr. Chow admits.

But of course, desire doesn’t move cleanly. It spills and stains like ink from a pen you forgot in your pocket. And though the two protagonists once vowed “We won’t be like them,” we know even then that they already are.

We never see the spouses whose betrayals bind the story. But we feel their absence in the objects they leave behind - souvenirs from abroad, rice cookers, ties, elegant handbags. There’s too much stuff filling up the cramped apartments, and yet they feel hollow - almost haunted by presence withheld. Inhaling the vapor of rumor to the air, Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan become ghosts in their own homes. Shadows orbiting through routine, colliding softly every once in a while.

The only thing that carries them forward is music. Nat King Cole’s voice drifts out from behind red curtains. In his crisp, American accented Spanish, we hear about longing and loss.
Quizás, Quizás, Quizás. The music speaks for them. What couldn’t be said becomes a pattern, then a memory. Slowly, even the ache softens, leaving only its shape behind.

“He remembers those vanished years. As though looking through a dusty window pane, the past is something he could see, but not touch. And everything he sees is blurred and indistinct.”

It’s hard to describe In the Mood for Love to people. The film doesn’t operate as plot so much as atmosphere. And it’s certainly not a love story. But a memory of what love almost was.
Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps.

In Heaven, Everything is Fine: Existentialism in Eraserhead

“ I don’t think that people accept the fact that life doesn’t make sense. I think it makes people terribly uncomfortable.”

— David Lynch

            A recent experiment conducted at the University of Britsh Columbia and published by Psychological Science explored whether Tylenol could help people overcome the angst triggered watching a four-minute clip of director David Lynch’s disorienting film Rabbits. According to researcher Daniel Randles, the study concluded that acetaminophen acts to “block existential unease in the same way it prevents pain, because a similar neurological process is responsible for both types of distress.”

            Reading about a study so weird (even by Lynchian standards) made me wonder how well Tylenol would work for an entire film directed by the eccentric auteur. More importantly – what would be the point in taking medicine to dull unease and anxiety while seeing such works? High risk of acetaminophen-induced liver damage aside, would it not actually hinder one’s experience of the Lynchian universe?

            In his oeuvre, which includes critically and commercially successful films like The Elephant Man (1980), Blue Velvet (1986) and Mulholland Drive (2001) and the hit TV show Twin Peaks, perhaps the most mystifying work is his first feature-length project, Eraserhead (1977). Though not a commercial success at the time of its release, Eraserhead still grew a cult following in the art-house circuits and midnight movies. It moved the likes of Stanley Kubrick to herald it as one of the most perfect “cinematic experiences” created to date and cite it as the most critical inspiration for The Shining (1980). Though otherwise unwavering in his decision to keep his own interpretations of his work a secret, Lynch once fondly referred to his first film as “a dream of dark and troubling things." In this nightmare, we enter an alternate universe full of surreal dream sequences and grotesque creatures that may or may not exist. We are guided by a character who is equally lost and confused. Yet, we identify with him because our journey through the film and his journey through life are filled with the same existential struggles concerning authenticity, self-deception, bad faith, anguish, freedom and responsibility. Although Henry, the protagonist, initially seeks happiness by submitting to the decisions of others and feeling cursed by his sense of dread, it is anxiety that allows him to break away from passivity and realize his freedom.

            In the beginning of the film, there does not seem to be much going on, particularly because our protagonist, Henry Spencer (Jack Nance), seems content with simply allowing events in his life to unfold as they come. We first see him walking home across a deserted lot. He seems to be pushed along by the wind and thrown up into the air by his apartment’s elevator.  His movements are awkward and restricted, and he constantly looks back to see if anyone is around. He accepts a dinner invitation from Mary X, his ex-girlfriend, without any hint of suspicion or concern. At dinner, Henry politely interacts with Mary's parents though they are aloof, unmindful, and bizarre in their hospitality. When Henry learns that Mary has given birth to his baby and that her parents expect them to get married immediately, he does not question or protest any of it. Though he is visibly shocked and clearly unprepared for the arrangement, Henry reassures Mary that he has "no problem" with getting married. In their marriage, Henry concedes to Mary in every way and can't even voice his feelings when she leaves Henry to take care of their child by himself. With Mary gone, Henry raises his child dutifully, even sacrificing his love of jazz because playing music makes the baby cry. He continues to give up and repress his own feelings in order to make other people happy. Henry does not object to his growing responsibilities but he does not welcome them happily, either. Our protagonist passively yields to however he thinks he should act in any given situation.  Henry acts inauthentically because he lives by society’s standards and denies himself the agency to make his own decisions. By doing so, he is denying his own freedom and responsibility. This is a form of self-deception, or bad faith in which the one to whom the lie is told and the one who lies are one and the same person,” requiring one to know his capacity as deceiver the truth that is hidden from him in his capacity as the one deceived (Sartre 89).

            Henry’s inner thoughts, however, give away to viewers the extent to which he is aware of this self-deception. We can see his thoughts through the use of metaphorical imagery throughout the film. Metaphorical imagery allows us to “view the characters as neither literally experiencing the events depicted nor dreaming or fantasizing about those events” but instead the relationship between what we see and what it means are allegorical, because “the filmmaker intends the viewer to come to a specific understanding [of the former]” in ways that would not be possible through the use of literal imagery (Southworth 190).  One such imagery is the window in Henry’s apartment, through which he can only see a brick wall. This cannot be taken as a factual depiction of the setting because it makes no sense to put a window where it is impossible to see outside. Instead, we must view it as a symbol of Henry’s feelings of entrapment and claustrophobia. Though he does not voice his dissatisfaction with his indecisive nature, Henry unwittingly admits through this scene that he is aware of the confinement that comes with passivity.

            A metaphorical imagery more central to the film is the depiction of Henry’s child. The child appears to be an alien-like creature, with snakelike features and a fragile body held together by bandages and a blanket. According to a hysterical Mary who ultimately ends up abandoning her child, “they’re still not sure it is a baby.” Because it is impossible for a human to give birth to such a creature, the child is itself a symbol reflecting Mary and Henry’s true feelings about having a baby in their circumstance. The baby is not a bundle of joy that invokes feelings of paternal love and protectiveness but an alien creature that does not resemble them and becomes a burden to care for. The fact that Henry continues to look after his child by himself shows his acceptance of societal norms and allowing them to dictate his life. But his reaction also follows Sartre’s concept of bad faith because "that which affects itself with bad faith must be conscious of its bad faith” because “the being of consciousness is consciousness of being (89). No matter how hard he tries to align his emotions to this moral system, Henry only sees a monster when he looks at his child. As time goes on, Henry begins to dread interacting with his child more and more.

            Henry’s anguish is mirrored in the film’s setting. From the very first seconds of the film, the sound design sets an atmosphere of dread. We hear dogs barking, furnaces churning, and unidentified machinery hissing away. The industrial sounds and low-level background noise unsettle us because we cannot identify them. It is not fear, which Sartre agrees with Kierkegaard's characterization as "something definite" and further describes as "fear of beings in the world," that consumes Henry’s apartment(Kierkegaard 139, Sartre 65). A deep, oppressive sense of worry permeates the film, as each ominous note of Fats Waller’s droning organ hints at something bad about to happen. We begin to understand Henry's anguish. His head is spinning with what Kierkegaard called a "dizziness of freedom" that originates from inside of him. Our protagonist is much like a soldier undergoing a bombardment in the sense that he is not only afraid of what is lurking in dark corners but is anxious about how he will possibly react when he comes face to face with his nightmares. Sartre’s definition of anguish as the "mode of being of freedom as consciousness of being" is very apt in this situation because Henry fears leaving the comfort of his passivity more than anything else and realization of freedom threatens his fatalistic inactivity (65). He is paralyzed by his own lack of action.

            While these meaningless sounds fill Henry with dread, music actually gives his life joy and purpose. We see this in a literal sense when we see Henry smiling as he puts on jazz records. Of course, he is forced to give up that up because his child is disturbed by the sound of music. At this rate, it appears that the only treasured entity that cannot be taken away from Henry is the Lady in the Radiator. Like his depiction of the child, Henry’s vision of the Lady in the Radiator is also a metaphorical image. With bloated cheeks, the Lady in the Radiator is disfigured, but not grotesque. Yet she is the strangest figure in the film because she is always seen smiling, singing, or dancing and will go on to inspire other nameless enigmatic figures in Lynch’s work, such as the Man From Another Place (Twin Peaks), the Cowboy (Mulholland Drive), and the Mystery Man (Lost Highway). The Lady in the Radiator can be seen as a foil of Henry as well as Mary. Though Henry and the Lady are both similarly awkward and shy, the Lady is visibly happy. Unlike Mary, the Lady provides comfort and friendship to Henry, who is otherwise alone with his child. She sings to Henry a song that is both warm and morbid, assuring him that “in heaven, everything is fine.” Henry is transfixed by her song, and contemplates finding this heaven, wondering whether death is required to reach it. He wants to follow the Lady in the Radiator to heaven and leave all of his problems behind. Yet as he reaches out, his vision ends, signifying that happiness cannot be achieved through mere escapism. At this point, the Lady in the Radiator deems Henry unfit for the place where everything is fine because he still had not taken any action in order to find happiness for himself.

            The next time Henry sees the Lady in the Radiator, she is dancing on a stage from which creatures resembling Henry’s baby falls from the ceiling. They are covering the entire floor, leaving no room to dance. This time, the Lady changes from her initial passive, sheepish temperament to an active, but destructive one in which she stomps on the creatures that are in her way. Henry tries to escape the rampage but is instead transported to another vision, one in which his head becomes detached from his body and is taken to a factory to be placed on the end of a pencil, much like an eraser. To make his head fit the pencil, the workers drill into his skull, emptying it out of his brain. There is eventually nothing left of Henry - no thought, no emotion - aside from a pile of eraser shavings. When Henry finally snaps back into “reality,” it appears that the two visions were actually metaphorical glimpses into Henry’s future. The first was the promise of happiness that would materialize once Henry decided to take control of his life, and the second would be his fate if he continued his passive existence.

            Henry realizes that he does not have to reluctantly follow other people’s conventions because he has the power and freedom to act in ways that he wants to. His eyes grow wide and his hair stands on its ends and he is filled, for the first time, with determination and purpose. With this drive, Henry decides to stab his child until it bleeds to death. Even more chilling than this violent scene is when Henry removes the blanket from the child and sees that its organs were not held together by skeleton or skin. Henry sees just how weak the pressures of society’s expectations truly were compared to the strength of individual will. Perhaps following that disturbing sequence, one may want to opt for a Tylenol or two. Following this apparent infanticide, Henry once again sees the Lady in the Radiator. She smiles and embraces him, as if to say that everything is finally fine. Henry can finally pass into a realm of happiness because he fulfilled a very important requirement: he consciously acted for the sake of his own happiness.

            It becomes clear that Henry’s final actions are ultimately a symbol of hope. He rejects what others think he should do and instead acts in a way he sees necessary. He sees for the first time in his life his possibility for freedom. Henry achieves what Kierkegaard asserted was “the goal of all a person’s striving” – not simply to “know oneself,” but also “to choose oneself” (81). The morality of Henry’s actions is secondary to the fact that he chooses to act. However, this does not absolve the narrator from our judgment. We do judge Henry’s actions, not by “designating [his] choice between good and evil” (75) but focusing on whether he makes “the choice by which one chooses good and evil or rules them out” (75). It is this act of choosing is one that gives individuals a “solemnity, a quiet dignity that is never entirely lost” (75). After a life of passivity and insincerity, Henry becomes the main actor in his life and finally achieves a state of authenticity.

            By now, it is apparent how Eraserhead has solidified itself as an existential work through its exploration of authenticity, self-deception, bad faith, anxiety, freedom, and responsibility. But that still does not being to make sense of the film or explain the alien babies, women in radiators, or bizarre dream sequences. Of course, this is precisely how the film was intended to be seen. A self-proclaimed lover of“mysteries and dreams and ambiguities and absurdities,” David Lynch considers the uneasiness and confusion to be exactly the desired reactions. Albert Camus would credit this feeling of discomfort to humankind’s desire for significance and meaning in an otherwise cold, indifferent and absurd universe. This conflict would leave an individual with the choices of suicide, a leap of faith, or recognition of the absurd. Henry’s realization of freedom was recognition of absurdity. Through this recognition, Henry is able to establish his own purpose. He revolts against a world that constantly breaks him down by refusing suicide and also sets himself free from the prison of society’s moral codes. He immortalizes himself as an existential hero.

Works Cited

Hong, Howard V., and Edna H. Hong, eds. The Essential Kierkegaard. Princeton, NJ:       Princeton UP, 2000. Print.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness: A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology. Trans. Hazel Estella. Barnes. New York: Washington Square, 1992. Print.

Southworth, Jason. ""In Heaven Everything Is Fine"" The Philosophy of David Lynch. By William J. Devlin and Shai Biderman. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky, 2011. 189-205. Print.

The Present Weird America: Finding the Past and Future in The Basement Tapes

            A recent graphic from satirical publication The Onion parodied a magazine cover proclaiming a story on the subject of “Musicians Named Bob Dylan from the 1960s to Today.” This is a valid commentary on the evolution of Dylan’s work throughout the last half-century: because one of the few consistencies in Dylan’s discography is his desire and ability to reinvent himself after every couple of records, one could argue that it’s not even the same musician on the different albums. This is the feeling that prompts many to study Dylan’s work in the contexts of pivotal moments and transitional periods. There is perhaps no greater or more mysterious watershed of Dylan’s career than the 1966 motorcycle crash. Following the accident, Dylan stopped touring, disappeared from the public eye, and relocated to Woodstock, New York. There, Dylan spent time with his family, had frequent music sessions with The Band, and reassessed the direction he was going with his career and his life. In the 2006 documentary Bob Dylan: 1966-1978 - After the Crash, Clinton Heylin, who has written extensively on Dylan’s work, considers the year 1967 to be both the “great lost year of Dylan’s career” and as well as the “most creative year of his career.” Heylin goes even further to claim that Dylan created “more great material in 1967 than in any year of his life.” Upon listening to the 1975 album The Basement Tapes, it is easy to see why it was so critically acclaimed. The Basement Tapes is a masterful display of Dylan’s ever-changing nature with exuberant, nonsensical songs juxtaposed with more serious, darker ones. It creates a sense of timelessness by drawing deeply from folk legends of the past and by creating a sound that will remain influential in the decades to come.

            Journalist Al Aronowitz, who frequently visited Dylan and The Band at the basement of Big Pink during 1967, describes in After the Crash the relaxed, yet spontaneously creative atmosphere of the sessions: “They were just having fun…They were going around singing a song, and saying ‘This song reminds me of this song, and this song reminds me of another song.’” From analysis of the lyrics, it is evident to many critics, such as Mike Marqusee, that Dylan adopted a “relaxed attitude toward the grotesque, the bizarre, the inexplicable” during this time that hinted he “found it a relief not to have to be serious about anything at all” (216).  This is especially apparent in tracks like “Million Dollar Bash.” With characters like “that big dumb blonde with her wheel gorged” and “Turtle, that friend of theirs with his checks all forged,” the song is as fun and chaotic as any crazy party (2, 4). Absurdity even turns to chaos and violence near the end of the song: “I looked at my watch, I looked at my wrist / Punched myself in the face with my fist” (47). In all of its apparent spontaneity, the song is still very carefully crafted. “Checks all forged,” “cheeks in a chunk,” and “cheese in the cash” repeat the “ch” sound much like pocketsful coins clinking and jingling as partygoers dance around in the Million Dollar Bash (5, 6, 7).  Author Michael Gray, in his compendium of Dylan’s life and works, The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, considers the incongruities in “Million Dollar Bash” to have great artistic merit and finds a “Robert Browning-like alliterative lunacy much in evidence” in the song’s “needlework of Noodledom” (94). 

            The absurdity continues in songs like “Please Mrs. Henry,” in which the narrator makes bold, inebriated claims that he can “drink like a fish,” “crawl like a snake,” and “bite like a turkey” (14, 17). Its memorable, nonsensical lines, such as “I’m a sweet bourbon daddy” and “I’m a generous bomb / I’m T-boned and punctured,” make Marcus think this song is a “detailed explanation addressed to a landlady or madam of just what it means to be too drunk to move, if not complain” (40, 255).  Equally ridiculous is “Tiny Montgomery,” in which the speaker shouts out imperatives and non-sequiturs in a style reminiscent of “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” Though commands to “scratch your dad,” “do that bird,” “grease that pig and sing praise” appear seemingly pointless, they serve a greater purpose as expressions of spontaneity and fun (21, 22, 30).

            Although the spontaneity of The Basement Tapes makes it obvious that Dylan and The Band were living in the present moment, the lyrics themselves transcend time. According to Robert Shelton in No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan, an alternative title of this album could have been “Roots” because it is a “massive catalog of chanteys, old blues, early rock, and truck-driver, hoedown, gospel, and folk songs” (266). These influences from the past are present in even the fun-filled nonsensical songs.  “Tiny Montgomery” is a great example of this: its calls to “tell everybody down in ol’ Frisco” and, later, to "have a party down in ol’ Frisco” invoke a sense of travel to a place where “birds,” “buzzard,” and “crows” fly free (1, 15, 27). It is place where outrageously named characters like “T-Bone Frank” and “Skinny Moo” are just as common as any regular “Lester” or “Lou” (8, 17).  As the song goes on, it gets closer and closer to ol’ Frisco and the sense of merriment and joy increases, though in all parts of the song a mysterious, legend-like “king of drunks,” Tiny Montgomery, continues to greet everyone (15). Greil Marcus argues in his novel-length analysis of Dylan’s Basement Tapes-era music, Invisible Republic, that these themes are more than just fanciful musings of the idyllic life. He says that, “in the basement, you could believe in the future only if you believe in the past…you could believe in the past only if you could reenact it” (71). This quest for timelessness is an echo of the “perfectly, absolutely metaphorical America” explored by Harry Smith in his 1952 Anthology of American Folk Music compilation: “An arena of rights and obligations, freedom and restraints, crime and punishment, love and death, humor and tragedy, speech and silence…” (213). The past is not just pages in history books. It is a realm that can be found, experienced, and channeled in the present. It is the “old, weird, America.”

            Not all songs digging to find their folk roots are as jubilant as “Tiny Montgomery,” however. In Chimes of Freedom: The Politics of Bob Dylan’s Art, Mike Marqusee says The Basement Tapes are “filled with the sound of young men singing like old men […] young men who had prematurely acquired a ruminative sense of a lost past” (215).  The album is equally tinged with darker songs of loss and sorrow. “Tears of Rage” laments the deterioration of humanity in modern times and the betrayal by a society the speaker thought could change for better. No matter how much he devoted himself to progress by carrying it in his “arms” on “Independence Day,” it just “threw us all aside and put us on our way” (1,2).  He feels as if he nurtured it like his own “daughter ‘neath the sun,” but was only met with “tears of rage” and “tears of grief” and being accused of being a “thief” (8, 9). Marqusee sees this song “haunted” by the knowledge that “patriotic solidarity, national identity, intergenerational bonds” have all been dissolved” (215). Though Dylan succeeds in finding his old weird America, he is still disillusioned and alienated in modern society. On “This Wheel’s On Fire,” Dylan’s lyrics exemplify the extent of the disillusionment in its pitches and peaks of unspeakable drama and intensity. Though the speaker promises that “you know that we shall meet again if your mem’ry serves you well,” he also warns that “no man alive will come to you with another tale to tell” (8, 7). There is no turning back from this prophecy of doom because the “wheel’s on fire / rolling down the road” and nothing left to do besides “notify my next of kin” (9, 10). Like the wheel of fire,  this song spins in a circular, explosive motion in everything from its theme to its repeated verse structures. The past never leaves us, even when it is seemingly destroyed. The image of a wheel on fire also disturbingly brings to mind Dylan’s own motorcycle crash that resulted in his retreat from the spotlight. Yet it was this incident that resulted in his reassessment of his life and his newfound quest for salvation.

            Of course, Dylan is not merely satisfied with tracing his roots to the folk legends--he reaches back to the past for Biblical allusions, internalizes them during the basement sessions, and projects them into future albums. He digs even deeper and evokes grave, serious spirituality with Biblical allusions and imagery to reflect a knowledge of mortality and a search for salvation. “This Wheel’s On Fire” exemplifies how the most noticeably dramatic and intense songs are fueled by these religious sentiments. Even the title brings to mind the Daniel’s vision of the Day of Judgment in the book of Daniel 7:9-10: “I beheld till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of days did sit […] His throne was like the fiery flame, and His wheels are burning fire.” The already apocalyptic themes of the songs now carry even greater weight. They take on eschatological connotations. Michael Gray notes how influential this particular imagery is on future records.  Eleven years after the major Basement Tapes song “This Wheel’s on Fire’ (1967) comes Street Legal, on which, in the opening song, the wonderful “Changing of the Guards,” Dylan sings: ‘Peace will come / With tranquility and splendor on the wheels of fire’” (47, 48). Though album following Street Legal, 1979’s Slow Train Coming, is widely regarded as the first of Dylan’s “Christian Trilogy,” it is apparent that Dylan began exploring the faith he’d adopt a decade later was discovered during The Basement Tapes era.          

            Songs like “Tears of Rage” and “Too Much of Nothing” interestingly appear to allude to Ecclesiastes. When the speaker in “Tears of Rage” admits that “[w]e’re so alone / and life is brief,” he accepts the mortality and brevity of human life and the futility in getting too attached to it (12, 13). Gray connects Dylan’s contemplation to the “first preoccupation of Ecclesiastes, the shortness of the human lifespan and the impossibility of leaving anything that lasts” because it states that “[n]o one can keep himself from dying or put off the day of his death” and that “[t]here is no remembrance of former things” (205). “Too Much of Nothing” picks up Ecclesiastes’ theme of advising against arrogant, ignorant speech when the speaker warns that “[t]oo much of nothing can make a man abuse king” and that “he can walk the streets and boast, but he wouldn’t know a thing” (13, 16). Gray paraphrases Ecclesiastes’ warning: “As long as you obey the king’s commands, you are safe, and a wise man knows how and when to do it. There is a right time and a right way to do everything, but we know so little” (205). When Dylan claims in the song that “[i]t’s all been done before, it’s all been written in the book,” it’s very easy to hear “which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun” (16,  Ecclesiastes 1:9). At first glance, it may appear that Dylan isn’t doing anything different. He had been using Biblical imagery since his earliest records. However, these lyrics differ by appearing to express sincere convictions, as opposed to simply using the scriptures as a literary reference.

            Apparently there really was something new under the sun. Aside from his spirituality, Dylan also began to devote his songs to minimalism and simplicity in the sessions in the basement at Big Pink. In his book Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited, Clinton Heylin quotes the poet Allen Ginsberg responding to this new change in Dylan’s writing by admitting that “[t]here was to be no wasted language, no wasted breath. All the imagery was to be functional rather than ornamental” (287). The most impressive thing about Dylan’s mastery of simplicity is how it was accomplished while also creating a record like The Basement Tapes. Though The Basement Tapes may seem to be just a mixture that bridges what Gray calls the “blocked confusion and turmoil” of Blonde on Blonde and the “highly serious, precarious quest for a personal and universal salvation” of John Wesley Harding, it can stand on its own. The pivotal album’s songs juxtaposed exuberance and sorrow as seamlessly as it drew influence from roots of the past and projected them into the future.  The legacy and lasting effects of The Basement Tapes are innumerable. Aside from being the source from which John Wesley Harding draws its stark, austere sound and its Biblical imagery, The Basement Tapes inspired an entire subgenre of modern Americana and folk music of the late ‘90s that would known as "the New Weird America."  Echoes of the basement sound can be heard in the lo-fi sound of early Mountain Goats, the harp plucking of Joanna Newsom, and even the psychedelic pop of Elephant 6 artists The Olivia Tremor Control. There is no better example of the ever-searching, ever-evolving, and forever-influencing quality of Dylan’s work than The Basement Tapes.

Works Cited

Bob Dylan: 1966-1978 - After the Crash . Dir. C Johnstone. Perf. Bob Dylan. Chrome      Dreams, 2006. DVD.

Dylan, Bob. Lyrics: 1962 – 2001. New York. Simon & Schuster. 2004

Gray, Michael. The Bob Dylan encyclopedia. New York: Continuum, 2006. Print.

Heylin, Clinton. Bob Dylan: behind the shades revisited. New York, NY: William Morrow, 2001. Print.

Marcus, Greil. Invisible republic: Bob Dylan's basement tapes. New York: H. Holt & Co., 1997. Print.

Marcus, Greil. “Excerpt from The Old Weird America.”  Hedin 116 – 121

            Hedin, Benjamin. Studio A: The Bob Dylan Reader. New York: W. W. Norton &    Company 2004. Print.

Marqusee, Mike. Chimes of Freedom: The Politics of Bob Dylan's Art. New York: New Press,  2003. Print.

"Musicians Named Bob Dylan From The 1960s To Today | The Onion - America's Finest            News Source."  <http://www.theonion.com/articles/musicians-named-bob-dylan-from the-1960s-to-today >.

Shelton, Robert. No Direction Home: the Life and Music of Bob Dylan. New York: Beech Tree Books, 1986. Print.

Sublime Tragedy in a Divine Comedy

            Upon first meeting Virgil in the Inferno, the Dante pilgrim says to his teacher and guide: “You alone are the one from whom I took/the noble style that was to bring me honor” (Inferno 1.86-87). Throughout the very Virgilian descent into the underworld, we find the extent to which this statement is true. Because Virgil embodies classical virtues, such as reason, piety, Latin literature, and a high authority to command through imperium, Dante could not have asked for a better companion to guide him through hell. Once we reach the Purgatorio, however, it is apparent that Virgil cannot proceed towards God. Though Dante refers to his epic poem as his “comedy,” this genre classification does not extend to all characters or all elements of his narrative. This distinction is important for Dante, who is writing in the less-elevated and more accessible vernacular, a clear contrast from his classical influences who wrote in [neither Dante nor anyone else could read Greek at that time; Greek authors were unknown to him even in translation]  Latin and incorporated the higher style of tragedy. Although Dante is indeed writing a Divine Comedy with respect to plot, language, and diction, he also utilizes the tragic mode to characterize Virgil, explore the arcane divine laws governing salvation, and even justify the Roman poet’s eternal fate in the first circle of Hell.

            It is tempting to take the author’s classification of his work at face value. After all, Dante does refer to his poem as “[his] comedy” in stark contrast to the “high tragedy” of Virgil’s Aeneid (Inferno 16.128, 30.113). In terms of plot, the poem is clearly a comedy. Our protagonist, the Dante pilgrim, begins his difficult journey through hell (Inferno) in order to find salvation in heaven (Paradiso). Additionally, the decision to use the vernacular over Latin appears to be a conscious effort on Dante’s part to maintain the low mode of a comedy. In his very formative book Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, Erich Auerbach echoes the misgivings readers may have on this issue: "Why do you want to rebaptize the book for me, when the author called it a Comedy?" He maintains, however, that "if its author called it a comedy because its style is low and popular, he was right in a literal sense, but in its way it is a sublime and great style”(186). Though he does not write in the elevated Latin of his classical influences, Dante does not use an elevated form of Italian as he defended in De vulgari eloquentia, either. Auerbach is fascinated by this novel use of everyday language, asserting that Dante gave the vernacular “a vigor and depth previously inconceivable,” that makes his style “immeasurably richer in directness, vigor, and subtlety” than that of his predecessors (183, 182).  Even when Dante employs the Virgilian high style in the dialogue between the protagonist and his first guide, for example, in the beginning of Canto X (ll 30 -33), Virgil’s words consist “exclusively of principal clauses without any formal connection by conjunction” (Auerbach 182). According to Robert Hollander, by “carefully allowing for the use of the high style” Dante finds a “possibility of joining the two styles in a ‘mixed’ style” (244). This short, clear, and original form of writing, combined with the consistently maintained gravitas of tone, signifies the authority that Dante takes to raises the voice of his poem from low (comedy) to high (tragedy) as he desires. 

            Aside from its unique style, the themes which the Comedy introduces “represent a mixture of sublimity and triviality which, measured by the standards of antiquity, is monstrous” (Auerbach 184). There is perhaps no other theme that so easily hinges between tragedy and comedy than that of God’s justice in the afterlife. Much as   he now “betrays a certain indecision in regard to the question of the stylistic category in which the Comedy might fall,” Dante also leaves the divine judgment of his predecessors uncertain (Auerbach 184).

            Early on in the text, Dante-the-poet appears to make a very final judgment on the status of poetry in his condemnation of “virtuous pagans” to Limbo in the first circle of Hell. Here reside figures as illustrious as Caesar, Socrates, Plato, Euclid, and even “the “master sage of those who know,” Aristotle (Inferno 4.131). Also present are the “master singer[s] of the sublimest verse:” Homer, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan(4.22).  They live in a realm resembling the Elysian Fields, reserved for “honorable souls, inhabitants of Limbo”; yet they are still living within a circle of Hell (4.72). This is, of course, “for no other guilt” than for “not worship[ping] God the way one should” (4.37-38). Though the Dante-pilgrim is star-struck to be in the presence of such thinkers and considers Aristotle to represent the summit of human reason, the achievement of each “virtuous pagan” symbolizes which a human could reach on his or her own without faith in the Judeo-Christian deity. Virgil laments later on that the mistake he, along with Plato, and Aristotle, made in the mortal world was trusting “in reason to reach truth” (Purgatorio 3.42). Despite their achievements and enlightenment, the glory of the sciences and arts” was not enough to save them (Inferno 4.73). Though not visibly suffering in the afterlife, these figures are still consumed by the much greater “pain in having hope cut off” (9.17-18). This fate is perhaps the most tragic of all the eternal punishments we see in Hell.

            Interestingly enough, this fate is not unique to the “virtuous pagans.” How the “virtuous pagans” currently live in Limbo is similar to how many individuals who were later released to heaven had lived – in pain but  without hope – before they inherited  God’s promise to Abraham. When we learn that Adam, “the first soul,” longed in “pain and in desire five thousand years and more” outside of Heaven, we hear an echo of Virgil’s revelation to the Dante-pilgrim about the “hopeless longing” and unquenchable “thirst” he “endures as endless pain” without the sight of God (Purgatorio 33.61, 3.34-44). Putting this into perspective of how the damned are periodically released from Hell by divine grace, the fate of the Limbo-dwellers seems much less permanent. According to Virgil, those in Limbo who live in the castles illuminated by a “hemisphere of light” are  there because of “the honored name they bear” because  their actions in the mortal world “wins Heaven’s favor for them in this place” (Inferno 4.69, 76-78). The fact that there appears to be a consideration in the afterlife for achievements in the living world indicates that the rules governing heaven are more complex and fluid than  the Dante-poet initially reveals.

            This puzzle is further complicated by the extent to which the Dante-pilgrim laments  Virgil’s return to Limbo when it is no longer possible for him to proceed through Purgatorio. After losing his teacher, guide, and poetic father, Dante says his entire being feels the absence of the “sweet father” to whom “for my salvation I gave up my soul” (Purgatorio 50-51). After Beatrice’s rebuke, the Dante-pilgrim does not dwell on this sadness, but this burden permeates the rest of the text. Later on, Beatrice senses Dante’s sadness stemming from Virgil’s fate and encourages him to voice whatever misgivings he has regarding the divine action. “For our justice to seem unjust in moral eyes is argument of faith,” she reassures him, is not of “heretical iniquity” (Paradiso 4.67-69). The Eagle offers similar advice when Dante specifically inquires about the fate of the virtuous pagans: Restrain yourself in judging [whether or not a person is saved or will be saved], for even we who see God cannot always make such judgments” (Paradiso 20.134-135). Dante-the-poet does this to highlight the fact that beatitude is something that many in heaven can’t understand. The unfairness that the Dante-pilgrim sees in the decision is not relevant when judging a system that is beyond comprehension. Many critics, including Mowbray Allan, interpret the Eagle's message as words of "hope" signifying "that knowledge of God's final judgment on the virtuous pagans is withheld so that we might participate in it" through prayer (Allan 202). Following this school of thought, Virgil is not condemned to “eternal exile” but instead assigned a more ambiguous fate (Allan 194). In this case, Virgil’s salvation and the mortal quest for truth through reason and art are not up for our protagonist to judge.

            On the other hand, the Eagle also prompts the Dante pilgrim to realize the unbelievable turn of events that would save Ripheus the Trojan, making him “the fifth of the holy lights in this circle” (Paradiso 20.67-68). There is incredible irony in the fact that Ripheus, a character in Virgil’s work, attains salvation but his literary creator is stuck in Limbo. Even crueler is the revelation that the poet Statius becomes a Christian because he reads Virgil’s work. Likewise, both Cato and Trajan either have either been intimately related to Virgil or profoundly affected by his work. If these four have been saved as a result of Virgil, why is Virgil himself not saved? As a result of his contribution to these saved souls, Dante could have easily written Virgil free from the first circle of Hell. The fact that he did not is critical to his view of salvation. Even though the author of the Aeneid has done more than anyone else to contribute to Dante’s Comedy, having done so does not automatically gain him entry to heaven. Robert Hollander stresses that Dante-the-poet did not save Virgil, “not because he lacked the boldness (one could never accuse him of poetic timidity),” but because Dante “did not believe that Virgil's work gave evidence of more than the cause for faith” (251). The fact that Virgil was able to inspire others to find salvation through Christ but did not have faith in Christ to come is itself a tragedy. The Aeneid, which symbolize a “rendering unto Caesar” and a failure to “render unto God,” is not only the single-most important work that influenced the Comedy but also the most incriminating piece of evidence used to deny its author salvation

            Among the paradoxical logic and arcane rules governing salvation also exists the curious fact that the further the Dante-pilgrim travels along on his destination to heaven, the less of a hold Dante-the-poet’s codes of judgment have. Uncertainty builds up on the ascent to heaven. Dante approaches judgment in his poem with the same level of indecision that he applied to the stylistic categories  characterizing his Comedy. Yet, this apparent uncertainty and indecision reflects Dante’s very definite purpose. According to Auerbach, Dante achieves his elevated style “integrating what is characteristically individual” and at times “horrible, ugly, grotesque, and vulgar with the dignity of God's judgment - a dignity which transcends the ultimate limits of our earthly conception of the sublime” (194). Although Dante relies most heavily on Virgil in order to develop his style and conception of the sublime, he approaches the matter of Virgil’s fate using more immediately present and more Christian  traditions. It is through his belief in a God with definitive judgment maintaining harmony and order throughout the universe that Dante can convince himself of the righteousness of Virgil’s fate. At the same time, Dante’s use of realism to depict Virgil and other individuals residing in Hell lets us know that he intends to moves us towards sympathy for these characters. Though every judgment in the Comedy is eventually resolved by the larger comic plot that contains it, each tragic plot is heightened to a sublime capacity which allows us to empathize with the “horrible, ugly, grotesque, and vulgar” in preparation towards an eventual recognition of “the dignity of God's judgment.” 

Works Cited

Allan, Mowbray. ""Does Dante Hope For Virgil's Salvation?"" MLN 104.1 (1989): 193-205. This is another article concerned with the question of the justice of Virgil's damnation. This is an interesting piece because instead of assuming that "Dante's Virgil is in fact condemned to eternal exile," Allan sees his fate being ambiguous (Allan 194). There is also a unique interpretation of the Eagle's message as words of "hope" that say "that knowledge of God's final judgment on the virtuous pagans is withheld so that we might participate in it" through prayer (202).

Auerbach, Erich. "Farinata and Cavalcante." Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2003. 174-202. Print. This text helped me better understand my other sources, particularly Robert Hollander. Auerbach illustrates the novel quality of Dante’s use of the vernacular and mixing of styles, resulting in a style “so immeasurably richer in directness, vigor, and subtlety,” than that of his predecessors (182). This essay also argues that Dante “betrays a certain indecision in regard to the question of the stylistic category in which the Comedy might fall,” and considers other instances of indecision (184). According to Auerbach, Dante’s use of realism allows us to separate individuals from their damned existences and recognize that even in Hell “there are great souls, and certain souls in Purgatory can for a moment forget the path of purification for the sweetness of a poem, the work of human frailty” (202)

Dante, Alighieri. The Portable Dante. Ed. Mark Musa. New York, NY: Penguin, 1995. Print. This is the edition of the Divine Comedy I am using for my research. Even though Dante calls this poem his "comedy” (Inferno 16.128), there is still considerable tragedy taking place throughout the narrative. When I first read this text, the fate of the "virtuous pagans," especially that of Virgil, seemed especially tragic. I plan to explore this tragedy and discover other tragic elements in the poem through my research.

Hollander, Robert. ""Tragedy in Dante's Comedy"" The Sewanee Review 91.2 (1983): 240-60. This source was especially thorough in its discussion of modes and how they related to tragedies and comedies. Hollander theorizes that it is possible for the work to be both a comedy and a tragedy. By “carefully allowing for the use of the high style” he thinks that Dante achieves the “possibility of joining the two styles in a ‘mixed’ style” (244). Also interesting was Hollander's assertion that, with respect to plot, "all of the Comedy is comic and the tragic plots, narrated by their protagonists in hell, are resolved by the larger comic plot which contains them" (245). This made me question how Virgil's plot was resolved by the end.

Letivan, Alan. "Dante as Listener, Cato's Rebuke, and Virgil's Self-Reproach." Dante Studies, with the Annual Report of the Dante Society 103.1985 (1985): 37-55. This article discusses the "self-reproach" Virgil feels after Cato rebukes everyone listening to Casella's song in Purgatory. Letivan also notes how the Casella episodes are very influenced by Virgil's descriptions of the temple of Juno at Carthage and the Temple of Apollo at Cumae in the Aeneid. It is interesting how Virgil is "less at fault morally than Dante-the-pilgrim" by lingering because "it is not Virgil's but Dante's salvation that is the issue in this poem" and Virgil shouldn't take Cato's rebuke as "consciously and personally directed towards himself" (52). Here, Virgil is less of a guide than he was in Hell - "Virgil is as much a newcomer, a stranger, to this classically unimaginable realm of purgatory as Dante himself" and thus finds himself "subject to errors, lapses, and temptations grounded in his sensibility and his spiritual and artistic past (53).

Comfort Found in Yeats’s “Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen”

           A recurring theme in Yeats’s works is fixation with time. In fact, six of his poems incorporate dates into their titles: “September 1913,” “On Those That Hated The Playboy of the Western World, 1907,” “Easter 1916”, “Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen,” “Coole Park, 1929” and “Coole Park and Ballylee, 1931.” Especially interesting is “Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen,” the only poem whose entire title is a date and one that was actually composed in 1921 with the end of the Irish War of Independence in sight. Though the worst of the violence is behind him, Yeats sets the poem at the end of the world.  Here, Yeats is haunted by a very specific kind of universal tragedy. Through its apocalyptic diction, loose-strung structure, and lack of transitions, “Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen” mirrors Yeats’s troubled thoughts as the threat of civilization’s collapse draws near.

            Yeats employs ominous diction to match the impending doomsday. This new world is “dragon-ridden” and infested with unimaginable evil (Yeats 25). Here, murderers run free with impunity and even the personification of entities such as “dream” and “night” find themselves overpowered by “nightmare” and “sweat[ing] with terror” (26, 29). It is worth noting that the very guards who had protected civilization in the past are now killing defenseless mothers. Here, the chaos and senseless violence cross over to the realm of tragedy. The mother represents the death of all society because humanity can no longer give birth to new philosophy, art, or culture. The tragedy is not the fact that all the “ornamental bronze,” “famous ivories,” and “golden grasshoppers” are gone, but the realization that “ingenious lovely things” cannot be created again. It is this realization that makes Yeats’s world collapse in Part VI, starting with the “[v]iolence upon the roads: violence of horses” (105). The apocalypse, which stood suspended for much of the poem, picks up at the end: “All break and vanish, and evil gathers head” (109). Jahan Ramazani writes in his essay, “Tragic Joy and the Sublime,” that with this imagery, Yeats “sets in motion the circle of Coleridgean formalism” in which a whole work cannot be disassembled into pieces and subsequently “breaks it apart” (Ramazani 167).

            Yeats is not content with breaking roads and dismantling Coleridgean formalism. He also sets the structure of “Nineteen Hundred Nineteen” on very shaky foundation. David B. McWhirter describes the poem’s form as one that “seems always on the verge of collapsing into a loosely strung-together sequence of short lyrics” (McWhirter 44). This intensifies the experience of reading the poem. The reason why we are caught off guard while trying to follow the sharp turns and sudden leaps in the poem is because there are no bridges connecting its different parts. Nothing, especially not “the guardsmen’s drowsy chargers,” prepares us for the “nightmare [that] rides upon sleep” (Yeats 24-26). With its narrator convinced that there is nothing more to say and that "[m]an is in love and loves what vanishes," the poem itself begins to vanish and retract to an inconclusive state (42). The leap it makes before jumping onto the next section is no more definite, however.

            With the lack of transitions, the contrasts between different sections of the poem are even more jarring. With their bridges destroyed, each of the six sections stands apart but stands tall. Part I, written in the ottava rima form with eight 11-syllable lines, laments the loss of antiquity with significant formality and stateliness; Part II employs meter and line lengths as complex as the metaphor of the dancers “enwound[ing] a shining web, a floating ribbon of cloth” (49-50); Part III reads like the quiet contemplations of “a man in his own secret meditation […] lost amid the labyrinth” (65-66). The single quatrain in Part IV destroys the interrupts the 8-line pattern and calmness of this meditation with a violent “shriek of pleasure.” The caustic imperatives in Part V (“Come let us mock at the great […] at the wise […] at the good”) turn to a more passive prophetic observation (“All break and vanish, and evil gathers head […] wind drops, dust settles”) by Part VI (80, 85,90, 111, 117). The lasting effect of this structure and form is disjunctive and unsettling. As we try to find a single identity, we are overwhelmed by an unresolved multiplicity of voices.  There is great tragedy in the fact that one cannot decide on a single voice to listen to or speak in even as the world ends.  The inner structures that make up our identities are collapsing as well.  McWhirter asserts that the “precipitate movement” between the verses “gives us the feeling that the poem is in some way dissociated from itself, at odds with its own intentions” and he concludes that “the poem seems to lack any stable identity behind its constantly shifting form” (McWhirter 46). Curiously enough, many critics have said the same thing about its poet.

            As Ireland’s most famous poet, dramatist, critic and a Senator under the Free State constitution, Yeats was a man of many identities. It is because his identity and his work are so open to interpretation that Yeats has been “variously claimed by nationalists, occultists, modernists, Romantics, and postcolonialists” (Brewer).  Particularly interesting is seeing Yeats’s work through a postcolonialist lens, especially his poems written during the Irish revolutionary period. When the Irish War of Independence began in early 1919, in the middle of other uprisings against colonial powers worldwide, civilization did seem to be falling apart. Edward Said, cultural critic and a founder of contemporary post-colonial studies, argues in “Yeats and Decolonization” for an understanding of Yeats as an “indisputably great national poet who during a period of anti-imperialist resistance articulates the experiences, the restorative vision of a people suffering under the domination of an offshore power” (Said 69). Said also views the nostalgic elements in Yeats’s preoccupation with “ideal community” and with history as “the wrong turns, the overlap, the . . . occasionally glorious moment,” as characteristics that “all the poets and men of letters of decolonization” share (73). It makes sense, therefore, that the beginning of “Nineteen Hundred Nineteen” laments over the loss of “ingenious lovely things” that originated in a time before modern imperialism.  Yeats’s tone turns bitter realizing the foolishness of thinking “that the worst rogues and rascals had died out” while there was still a “Parliament and king [who] [t]hought that unless a little powder burned, the trumpeters might burst with trumpeting (Yeats 16, 20-22). Putting Yeats’s “sustained anti-British sentiment” and identification with “the struggle for release” following the establishment of an Irish Free State into perspective, it follows that he views colonialism as one of the catalysts to society’s eventual demise (Said 83).  

            Another interesting postcolonial approach to Yeats is found in Declan Kiberd’s 1995 comparison of modern world literature, Inventing Ireland. Kiberd explores the connection between literature from a “parent country” and that from a “cultural colony” and argues that Yeats, like other authors from colonized nations, performs a “search for a national style.” Furthermore, Kiberd asserts that this search is also a journey for one’s own style, voice, and identity motivated by “self-conquest” (Kiberd 120).  Kiberd argues that for Yeats,  “the decolonization of the body was a task almost as important as the decolonization of the native culture” (127). Keeping this in mind, it is critical to explore whether the lack of stable identity that comes from the poem’s constantly shifting form is the result of being denied a national and cultural identity over centuries of colonial oppression. This has interesting implications for Yeats’s choice of structure and elimination of transitions. As we read through the poem, we follow the poet’s search for his own style.

            The unresolved multiplicity of voices and the disjunctive effect mirror a perpetual internal crisis as the poem repeatedly destroys itself before building itself again. McWrirter notes that the only freedom we have from this conflict is in the transitional voids that provide "a place of silence, a place on which the poet falls back in exhaustion after grappling with an image and from which he gathers strength" (54). This pattern of expansion and contractions is very much intentional, perhaps as a way for Yeats to create "his own kind of self-destructive art" (McWrirter 52). Yeats's search for new forms of expression is motivated by the same catharsis sought out in ancient Greece. The scenes of destruction and the destruction of each part of the poem are a way of purging the emotions and anxieties that plague our narrator.      There does not seem to be any escape from this turmoil, but there is respite and renewal in the silent void. Though it may appear through the catastrophic diction and volatile form in “Nineteen Hundred Nineteen” that Yeats is only haunted by the threat of civilization’s collapse, the true tragedy is in the uncertainty of ever truly finding a national and personal identity in the rare, ephemeral moments of silence.  Yet, the influence Yeats has had on authors as diverse as Derek Walcott, Chinua Achebe, and Raja Rao, who have each, in turn, defined identity for indigenous people and people of color in new ways, suggests that “self-conquest” is very much possible in these brief moments of knowledge. There is indeed “comfort to be found,” in how “man is in love” with “what vanishes.”

Works Cited

Brewer, Elizabeth. "Yeats, W.B. and Postcolonialism." Postcolonial Studies @ Emory (2012): n. pag. Web. This is a helpful guide from the Postcolonial and Minority Studies Program at Emory University that offers a critical overview of Yeats's work and on various major critical contributors on the question of Yeats and postcolonialism. The bibliography led me to other texts for further reading, ranging from Jahan Ramazani’s “Is Yeats a Postcolonial Poet?” to Seamus Deane’s Celtic Revivals.

Doggett, Rob. "Writing out (Of) Chaos: Constructions of History in Yeats's  ‘Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen’ and  ‘Meditations in Time of Civil War.’" Twentieth Century Literature 47.2 (Summer, 2001): 137-68. Doggett discusses in his article the problems that arise from viewing Yeats work from a historical standpoint and instead argues that Yeats is "exercising his 'one duty' to rewrite history" (138). Furthermore, Doggett argues that Yeats's work "challenges former and current nationalist narratives of history" that "helped to perpetuate a 'colonialist mentality' even after the establishment of the Free State” (139).

Kiberd, Declan. Inventing Ireland. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1996. 115-30. Print. Here, Kiberd rejects the notion that artists such as Wilde, Yeats, Joyce, and Beckett became modern “to the extent that they made themselves European" and instead he contends that the Irish experience was a “dramatic instance of experimental modernity.” Kiberd explores the connection between literature from a “parent country” and that from a “cultural colony” and argues that Yeats, like other authors from colonized nations, performs a “search for a national style” for the sake of “self-conquest” and a “decolonization of the body”(120, 127).

McWhirter, David B. "The Rhythm of the Body in Yeats'  ‘Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen’." College Literature 13.1 (1986): 44-54. McWhirter explores in this essay a central aspect of Yeats' modernity-  "the development of a style that increasingly suppresses transitional material," focusing especially on ""The Tower," "Meditations in Time of Civil War," "Vacillation," and "Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen." (44). On the latter, he acknowledges the "implications of a strategy that virtually eliminates transitions," and describes how each section of the poem "projects a distinctive tone." He credits these characteristics for creating a poem that "seems to lack any stable identity behind its constantly shifting form" (46).

Ramazani, R. Jahan. "Yeats: Tragic Joy and the Sublime." PMLA 104. 2 (1989): 163-77. This secondary work inspired the focus my paper takes on Yeats's view of tragedy in "Nineteen Hundred Nineteen." Ramazani uses Yeats own term, "tragic joy," to argue that the "sublime transforms the painful spectacle of destruction and death into a joyful assertion of human freedom and transcendence" (163). Also focuses on classifications of Yeats's common "sublime modes -- the curse, the prophecy, and the apocalypse" (164).

Reid, B. L. "Yeats and Tragedy." The Hudson Review 11. 3 (1958): 391-410. Print. This article offers a more general commentary the elements of tragedy in Yeats's poetry. He argues that the poems "draw a design substantially identical to the design of the Dionysus-mystery which is the primitive original of tragedy." Reid then hypothesizes that this is a kind of "ideological configuration" that "ordains the great 'normative' pattern of serious human thought" (392). I find it interesting how he uses this thesis to later conclude how "[u]ltimately Yeats's location of the roots of this emotion in 'generic' tragedy, in one's very sense of life, of 'all men's fate'" (400).

Said, Edward W. "Yeats and Decolonization." Nationalism, Colonialism, and Literature. By Terry Eagleton, Fredric Jameson, Edward Said, and Seamus Deane. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1990. 69-94. Print. This volume is comprised of three essays("Irony and Commitment," "Modernism and Imperialism," and "Yeats and Decolonization") that were each originally published as individual pamphlets. The third essay, written by Edward Said, explores the question of viewing Yeats as a postcolonialist author. Said asserts that Yeats is not only an an “indisputably great national poet who during a period of anti-imperialist resistance articulates the experiences, the restorative vision of a people suffering under the domination of an offshore power” but also a individual whose ideals reflect those of “all the poets and men of letters of decolonization” (69, 73)

Yeats, W. B. "Nineteen Hundred Nineteen." The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats. New York: Macmillan, 1956. 206-10. Print. This is the primary work that I am focusing on in this paper. I was drawn to this poem from its very first line: "Many ingenious lovely things are gone." Though its title and its allusions to ancient history evokes the past, lines like "Man is in love and loves what vanishes, What more is there to say?" comment more on an inescapable, everyday kind of tragedy (42-43).

A Shirt the Color of the Nile

            By following the mainstream Western media’s coverage of the Arab Spring since late 2010, one may see the uprisings as distant outsiders. Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic Slavoj Zizek, has been very outspoken on how the Western media failed to see the true spirit of these revolutions. In his essay “The Arab Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall,” Zizek takes a unique perspective not just on one season, but on a more complete “Arab Year.” Of course, Zizek himself is a Westerner and he would agree that his theories observed from a distance are nothing unless it applies to the experiences of the very people who participated in the revolution. One great source of these voices is Khaled Al Khamissi’s short story collection Taxi. Author Al Khamissi, a resident of Cairo, not only compiles a collage of the multitude of attitudes coexisting and clashing in Egypt through conversations with cab drivers but also exemplifies and solidifies the theories expounded by Zizek. The preface of Taxi, very aptly titled “Made in Egypt,” discusses the uncertainty of Egypt’s future following the downfall of Mubarak. The narrator and a taxi driver employ a metaphorical old, worn shirt to describe the current state of Egypt. In it, Al Khamissi offers three options on what to do with the vestiges of the old regime by thinking about what is done to old shirts:

            First, you can burn it to get rid of it for good, and go and buy a new one; second, you can have it altered to fit you and buy some new cloth for it, and try to remove the blood stains and the stench;    or third, you can give it a good wash and have it ironed [….] and tell yourself: “That’s the easiest way and there’s a chance I might lose weight again.”

The plentitude of choices mirrors just how much power and how many options the Egyptian people have in their own hands. Many in the West attempt to co-opt the revolutions as a desire to be more like them, while many still cynically dismiss the potential of the uprisings under the guise of concern. However, the true spirit of the uprisings in Egypt is rooted in Egypt’s own citizens recognizing the problems of the old regime, taking fates into their own hands, and creating a government for the people by the people.

            The first stage of a revolution is a realization of the oppressive status quo. During the decades-long reign of Hosni Mubarak, discontent with the government gained momentum. The politically explosive atmosphere of the Arab Spring was the result of the Egyptian public enduring how for decades Mubarak stole from citizens, restricted freedoms, and disregarded human life Zizek discusses the pre-2011 condition of Egypt as a“permanent state of emergency imposed by the Mubarak regime” (Zizek 71). The rule of law was suspended and the entire country was in a state of political immobility.  Absolutely no outlet for political dialogue existed aside from the protests that took place. This argument is supported by Al Khamissi’s shirt metaphor. He describes the shirt as “scruffy,” “old,” and “in an awful state” to mirror the ineffective and corrupt government that has plagued the country. The fact that the shirt has been “too small for you for ages” indicates how the Egyptian people have advanced at a faster rate than their government and has outgrown the old regime.  Al Khamissi also alludes to the protests against this government by describing the shirt as being “spattered with blood.” These bloodstains were earned after days of fighting against the previous “owner” of the shirt, Mubarak, the “criminal on the run who’s hiding out in Sharm el-Sheikh.” From the preface of Taxi alone, a general Egyptian aversion towards Mubarak’s rule is evident. This precise sentiment is the reason why Zizek claimed that it made “perfect sense” that after the Arab Spring, many Egyptians could now “claim to feel alive for the first time in their lives” (Zizek 71). Egyptian citizens finally realized they were capable of disposing of the remnants of the old regime like a scruffy, worn shirt.

            More importantly, revolutionaries in Egypt realized that they could discard the old regime by themselves. This attitude of independence indicates that they believe in the possibility of taking control of their own fates. Zizek very accurately described this awareness with his metaphor of the dish in the museum. The ancient dish with the proverb inscribed reveals an “ultimate message” of how our destinies are neither subordinate to “blind fate” nor total “freedom to do what one wants,” but a “deeper freedom to decide (“choose”) our fate” (67). Zizek connects the ancient wisdom’s relevancy to current revolutions since they are led by people who want to take fate from the hands of oppressive dictators and into their own hands. Furthermore, Egyptian protesters are not content with taking the power of Mubarak’s regime and passing it to another.  This is why they are wary of the army’s attempts to “wash” and “iron” the old system into a more presentable state. The taxi driver in Al Khamissi’s preface echoes this sentiment: “Today my son told me the demonstrations will continue right across Egypt to tell the army ‘You helped us and we’re grateful, but now you have to understand we don’t accept the wash and iron process you’re trying to sell us.‘” It is only the Egyptian people who know what they want in a government and how to bring about the change.

            This desire for independently achieving one’s own freedom is described by Zizek as a “radical emancipatory potential” that is historically inherent to the philosophy of the Arab world (Zizek 65).  This is the potential to ask the question of “What if, instead of bemoaning our fate, we should seize the moment and change it?” Zizek argues here is that this potential is not limited to events in history books but is a force alive and at work in the Arab Spring of today. This explains why the taxi driver in Al Khamissi’s book claims that in a nation of innovative citizens and an army of “laundrymen,” “the inventors are the future” because they take control of their fate. As inventors, the citizens have a very clear and ambitious dream. Though Egyptians may be split between multiple religious, political, and social divisions, they all agree that Egypt’s future must be built exclusively for the nation, much like a “tailor-made shirt.”

            This strong desire for independence and autonomy is not well recognized in the West, Zizek argues. He divides the disbelievers into two categories. First, Zizek argues against Western liberals who are cynical of the outcome of the events in the Arab world.  He cities among the “shameful and dangerously opportunistic reactions” to the upheaval in Egypt a statement by Tony Blair that acknowledged the necessity of change, but urged “stable change” (Zizek 73). Zizek points out that “[s]table change” only meant a compromise with the Mubarak forces. Zizek also calls out the “hypocrisy of Western liberals” for publicly supporting the “spread of democracy” world-wide while being “deeply concerned” by people “revolting against tyrants in the name of freedom and justice” (Zizek 73).  Zizek thinks our reaction should not be of concern, but of “joy,” because these protests show that “freedom has been given a chance” (Zizek 74).  Zizek also sees an equally problematic “hidden struggle for the appropriation” of the current revolutions in which the Western media sees these movements as a “pro-democracy” sentiment that is linked to “desire for Western liberal democracy, a desire to become like the West” (Zizek 74). This outlook ultimately diminishes the Egyptian people’s capacity to find their own solutions without the need for foreign intervention. Zizek is disturbed by the cynicism that “popular upheavals in Arab countries always end with the triumph of militant Islamism” (Zizek 75). People are prematurely assuming that after the events take place, Mubarak will then eventually appear as the lesser evil.  Above all, Zizek believes this cynicism is unwarranted and that we should “remain unconditionally faithful to the radical emancipatory core of the Egyptian uprising” (Zizek 75).

            Because Egyptians aspire for something far greater, the taxi driver in Al Khamissi’s story is certain that they will not be wooed by the “white” shirt of Western nations, the “green” shirt of Islamic governments, the “red” shirt of communism, or even the “flashy” shirt of American democracy. All of these are imperfect systems that are controlled by “billionaires manipulating policies and people.” Instead, the people of Egypt “want a government that knows how to make the most of that feeling every Egyptian feels deep down.” This is a new era in which each citizen’s dreams “float in the air, waiting for someone to grab them” and at a single notice, all 90 million Egyptians are ready to support a government that would fit them all perfectly. The new shirt will “spout wings” and give each person the ability to soar to undiscovered heights. It would be as quintessentially Egyptian as the “smell of jasmine” and the eponymous cotton. It will be the “color of the Nile.”

            Soon after writing these words in the preface, Al Khamissi credited in a February 2011 France 24 interview the source of the Western media’s ignorance of the true spirit of the Arab Spring to Westerners’ dependency on the “European, American press” and a “lack of reading Egyptian literature.” He also claimed his reason for making taxi drivers central to his work was because “Taxi drivers live under the line of poverty. These people in Egypt are more wise than I am. And wise people say ‘We’ll wait and see…’” By finally seeing the revolution through Egyptian eyes, it is possible to better understand the complexities of the past and gain a clear, confident view into the uncertain, but unquestionably optimistic future ahead. Once again, Zizek’s words ring true. From our distance, we can do nothing greater than remain “unconditionally faithful to the radical emancipatory core of the Egyptian uprising.”  

Works Cited

Al Khamissi, Khalid. Taxi. Laverstock: Aflame, 2008. Print.

Žižek, Slavoj. "The Arab Spring, Summer, Winter, and Fall." The Year of Dreaming Dangerously. London: Verso, 2012. Print.

Review: The Robert Lowell Memorial Poetry Reading, featuring C. K. Williams and Eleanor Goodman at the Castle

Eleanor Goodman:

             The event began with a very enjoyable reading by Eleanor Goodman from her book Habitation. Her poems offered a very interesting perspective because of her work in poetry, fiction, and translation. In her reading, she took the audience on a journey through her family tree in “Ancestry,” to the base of Santa Maria della Vittoria in “Rome,” and the Limpopo River in between Zimbabwe and South Africa. A really memorable image that stuck with me was her grandfather’s advice to “pick up pennies for good luck” and how, even at age 70, he tolerates knee pain to pick them up on the street. She also recited a poem written by a contemporary Chinese poet to show the musicality and natural euphony of the language, followed by its English translation that revealed the beauty of the words. My favorite part about her poetry is how they aim to portray not the exotic or the fantastic, but the realistic aspects of life. She does not see any of the foreign places she describes with the lens of an outsider. I would say this quality of her work is what allowed me to picture the places she described in my head so vividly, even though I have never been there myself.

C. K. Williams:

            Williams begins with an anecdote about how, even while sitting alone at his desk, he never found poetry writing to be a quiet, peaceful, or solitary process. The first poem instantly catches my attention with its onomatopoeic title “Whacked!”  In it, he details his struggle with producing a “poor damp little poem.”

“Every morning of my life I sit at my desk getting whacked by some great poet or other…” he starts. It’s not merely the legends –   “some Yeats, some Auden, some Herbert or Larkin” – who intimidate him. It’s also the a “whole tribe of others – oi! – younger than me.” Because all of his influences haunt his thoughts, he declares that “one never is, really, a poet. Or I'm not. Not when I'm trying to write…” For a second, he even considers reading “bad poems” to escape this sting, but realizes that the dullness is even worse. He ends up deeming it a “waste of time” if “you're not being whacked.” The rising intensity, the drama has everyone at the edge of their seats for the duration of this poem. If there were still any misconceptions in my head of writing poetry to be a peaceful, idyllic activity, it has been completely whacked out of my brain.
            I found that alluding to other poets and authors was very common Williams’s work. At first all the allusions seemed chaotic and I struggled to keep up. There were poets I had read, poets I’ve meant to read, and poets I’ve never even heard of. There were poets whose echoes could once be heard just down the street, like Lowell, Sexton, Plath, and Starbuck. There were poets whose voices carried over from as far as Japan, such as Basho, Issa, Buson. Williams tells the audience what he feels is the most important message he has to give: Reading and writing, in poetry, are not separate things. Every poet is a product of his or her influences and how he or she chooses to interpret and borrow from them.  Williams chooses to show his influences plainly and directly because artists, writers, and thinkers have had such a great impact on his life. In his poem “Exhaust,” for example, he cites his “rapture reading Camus,” for example, for showing him that “suicide wasn’t the route” and to focus on “love, family, poetry, art” instead.”         The most striking and memorable poem was “A Hundred Bones,” which explores themes of indoctrination, childhood, and enlightenment from the search for knowledge. “A Hundred Bones” is a recollection of Williams’s childhood growing up during the WWII. We first see an innocent image of children playing with toy planes. He soon turns the activity from innocent to disturbing when we hear what the children are talking about: fighter planes, blockbusters – “bombs that smash down your whole block,” “words we don’t know yet – gas chamber, napalm…”

            Williams addresses the same question that’s in the listener’s mind: “Do children of all places and times speak so passionately and knowledgeably about torture?”
The question haunts us when we realize what we know that the children did not. That “cities were burning,” that “some Japanese cities aren’t even there,” and atom bombs that caused “shadows to burn into asphalt.” Everyone in the room is now trying to find the same answers. They are trying to figure our what exactly the “flaw” - the “error” of humans is.  Williams offers no answers but instead quotes a mysterious haiku from Basho. The audience hangs on to his words and their seats like a frog "invisibly waiting forever to make its leap.”  

The Language of the Revolution: Inclusivity in Occupy Wall Street

Occupy Wall Street’s proclamation of solidarity has been its most identifiable message. Though individual Occupiers disagree about the focus and though the entire movement faces criticism for a lack of clear direction, there is never a dispute about the slogan: “We are the 99%.”  According to Richard Schechner, NYU professor of Performance Studies, this slogan demonstrates that the movement’s “unifying theme was solidarity” in favor of a “redistribution of wealth and power,” in a way that “people of all persuasions” can stand behind (Schechner 9). But despite its projected image of inclusivity, the Occupy Wall Street movement has not really succeeded in accurately representing “99%” of Americans. Led largely by young white men, there is actually an underrepresentation of women and racial minorities in Zuccotti Park.

            This is not because these communities are currently facing less economic problem, but because they cannot relate to the message Occupy sends. The rise of the “(Un)Occupy” slogan demonstrates that the Occupy and its practices are especially failing to reach out to people of color. Although minority communities are ready to challenge the same corporate malfeasance that Occupy is fighting, they still feel alienated by the movement’s name, privilege, and potential to encroach on or co-opt already existing movements.

            Many criticisms of Occupy Wall Street have focused on the name of the movement itself and on the problematic connotations of the word “occupy.” At first glance, it is easy to see why the word “occupy” was initially adopted. W. J. T. Mitchell, Professor of English and Art History at the University of Chicago and editor of the interdisciplinary journal Critical Inquiry, considers the word appropriate because it communicates an intent to “occupy rather than to merely demonstrate and go home” (Mitchell 14). Mitchell traces the word back to the Roman trope of “occupatio”, the “tactic of anticipating an adversary’s arguments by preempting them, taking the initiative in a space where one knows in advance that there will be resistance and counterarguments” (Mitchell 10). It is thus, a demand in its own right for presence and an insistence on being heard. The rhetoric does not just take possession of empty space in an argument but also provokes a response and frames it in advance. In the same way, Occupy Wall Street separates itself from temporary, transitory gatherings and asserts that it is a “manifestation of a long term resolve” (Mitchell 14).

            Nevertheless, some protesters who otherwise agree with the movement find the language problematic. Activists in regions with a significant presence of indigenous people, such as Puerto Rico, New Mexico, and Hawaii, are rallying behind the slogan of “(Un)Occupy.” In her remarks at Washington Square Park, civil rights activist and scholar Angela Davis urged protestors using the “occupy” slogan to be aware of the “genocidal occupation of indigenous lands,” “violent and brutal occupations” in other countries, and “military occupation” (Davis 133). It’s easy to see why this will alienate people who originate from formerly colonized nations or have been historically oppressed by imperialist forces. According to Davis, we must, therefore,  “challenge language,” “transform language” and eventually change the meaning of “occupy” into “something that is beautiful, something that brings community together, something that calls for love, happiness, and hope” (Davis 133). Mitchell, too, acknowledges the importance of transforming a word so connected to “military conquest and neocolonialism” (Mitchell 12). He thinks that the movement is actually seeking to occupy a “global system that has oppressed and impoverished the vast majority of the world's population” and to reclaim the public space for “justice, democracy, and equality” (Mitchell 9).

            Other activists, however, are still skeptical of these claims. Among their concerns, they cite the lack of representation of people of color. Even Schechner, who feels positively about Occupy, acknowledges that that many are suspicious of the movement because it favors those “already occupying places of privilege,” such as “educated whites, mostly          urban, largely under 40” (Schechner 9). For a movement claiming to represent “the 99%,” Occupy is not very diverse. Washington Post columnist Stacey Patton illustrates in her article, “Why African Americans aren’t Embracing Occupy,” the representation gap by citing recent surveys.  She finds that “although African Americans are 12.6 percent of the U.S. population,” they “make up only 1.6 percent of Occupy Wall Street” (Patton 2). She finds this surprising, because she thought that the movement should particularly resonate with black Americans, who, on average, are facing higher unemployment and other economic struggles than the average white household. Additionally, she notes that “African Americans share white Americans’ anger about corporate greed and corruption, and also have a rich history of protesting injustice in United States” (Patton 1). Activist Andrea Lim notices a similar trend in other communities. While dining in Chinatown, located less than a mile from Zuccotti Park, she realizes that the community, which “has never stopped being economically, politically, and culturally marginalized,” paradoxically has “nearly no presence in OWS” (Lim 100). This prompts discussion of why there is such little representation of minority groups in Occupy Wall Street. It brings the inclusivity of the movement into question. Are the practices of the movement alienating certain groups?

            This leads many to believe that the common attitudes, such as the ease with which Occupiers justify the use of “occupy,” is reflective a larger privilege affecting the movement. Activist Emahunn Raheem Ali Campbell argues in his essay, “A Critique of The Occupy Movement from a Black Occupier,” that “white privilege” functions within the movement to “close safe spaces for people of color to join and effectively participate” (Campbell 42).  Campbell recalls how he is often invited to Occupy “teach-in” events to speak about the prison industrial complex. After the discussions, he and other minority speakers agreed that they felt “tokenized and that [their] respective discussions would not have a direct positive impact on [their] efforts” (Campbell 46). In this sense, movement is simply content with bringing in people of color or members of the LGBQT community to speak on intersectionality, but has no further plans of addressing internal racism on a large scale. In an other example of privilege, Campbell admits that he was “struck by how Occupiers attempted to forge an alliance with the police by chanting, ‘We are the ninety-nine percent! So are you! You are one of us’” (Campbell 49). Speaking from his own experiences, Campbell says “for black and brown people, it is hard to stomach how the police are of us, regardless of their working-class orientation and occupation” (Campbell 49). If there is widespread ignorance of issues affecting people of color, such as stop-and-frisk, racial profiling, police surveillance, and mass incarceration, then the movement stops being a safe space for many minority groups.

            Aside from trying to ally with “the system,” Occupy appears to sometimes encroach on other, long-established social movements and spaces. From his involvement in the movement, Campbell notices, “some local activists view Occupiers not only as usurpers of decades-long struggles, but also and unfortunately as “occupiers” of their cities (Campbell 48).” Because of Occupy’s presence in areas such as Brooklyn, “one may argue that Occupiers have ‘occupied’ an action started by an organization that people of color led, silencing their voices in the process” (Campbell 49). Though Occupiers take projects of anti-imperialism and anti-militarization seriously, it’s possible that “through language and activism,” they might actually reconstitute these very practices (Campbell 47).  In neighborhoods where residents are wary of gentrification, a new wave of protestors of more privileged backgrounds is seen as a potential threat to the identity, diversity, and vibrancy of local activism. Historically, the “high joblessness and social disenfranchisement that is new to most of the Wall Street protesters” has been a “fact of life” for many communities (Patton 2). Additionally, Black America’s fight for income equality is not just isolated to Wall Street, but “is a matter of day-to-day survival” (Patton 2). The residents of Chinatown share similar views. “Why should Chinatown jump aboard,” asks Lim, when “the community has self-organized for over a century against racial discrimination and for economic and social security without much outside recognition or help?” (Lim 104). African Americans, Asian-Americans, and many other minority groups alike had been forced to form their own systems of political organization and economic and social support because they were historically excluded from mainstream American society. They still have their own battles against tenant evictions, police brutality and street crime to fight and cannot afford to have their own struggles sidelined by bigger, more amorphous Occupy movement. In this sense, the smaller, ethnicity-based activist groups understand the message of Occupy very well. In fact, they have been fighting the same battle for much longer than OWS has. But does Occupy understand these groups? 

            Even more important is the question of whether Occupy can risk continue to remain ignorant of concerns affecting these communities. Is this possible when inclusivity is intrinsically related to the eventual success of Occupy Wall Street? Solidarity is a goal the movement set for itself. Our society cannot afford to lose any of the momentum Occupy has gained or any of the revolutionary acts it has inspired. Different ethnic communities can benefit from aligning themselves with a larger movement to raise more awareness for their struggles. But this cannot be accomplished unless Occupy decides to actively align itself with the different movements. If it does not do so, then it is in danger of “collapsing under its own weight of white privilege” (Campbell 50). Occupy has woken up our nation with its challenge to the 1%. Now it has to challenge itself. Only after Occupiers have renounced using the same divisive methods of the 1% can they stand with all people and rally behind “We are the 99%.”

Works Cited

Campbell, Emahunn Raheem Ali. "A Critique of the Occupy Movement from a BlackOccupier." The Black Scholar No. 4, Special Anniversary Conference Issue: A Celebration of the First Forty Years (Winter 2011): 42-51. 

Davis, Angela. "Un(Occupy) - Remarks at Washington Square Park, October 30."Occupy!: Scenes from Occupied America. Ed. Astra Taylor and Keith  Cessen. London: Verso, 2011. 133. Print.

Lim, Audrea. "Chinatown is Nowhere." Occupy!: Scenes from Occupied America. Ed. Astra Taylor and Keith Cessen. London: Verso, 2011. 99-104. Print.

Mitchell, W. J. T. "Image, Space, Revolution: The Arts of Occupation." Critical Inquiry.

Vol. 39, No. 1 (Autumn 2012): 8-32. Patton, Stacey. "Why African Americans Aren’t Embracing Occupy Wall Street." The Washington Post 25 Nov. 2011

Schechner, Richard. "Occupy Solidarity." TDR (1988-) Vol. 56. No.1 (Spring 2012): 7-9.

Annotated Bibliography

Campbell, Emahunn Raheem Ali. "A Critique of the Occupy Movement from a Black Occupier." The Black Scholar No. 4, Special Anniversary Conference Issue: A Celebration of the First Forty Years (Winter 2011): 42-51.  I found this source to be very eye-opening, as it is a first-hand account from someone who is involved in the movement and still sees much progress to be made. An interesting point he brings up is that due to Occupy’s presence in areas such as Brooklyn, “one may argue that Occupiers have ‘occupied’ an action started by an organization that people of color led, silencing their voices in the process.” From his involvement in the movement, he notices that “some local activists view Occupiers not only as usurpers of decades-long struggles, but also and unfortunately as “occupiers” of their cities (48).” Campbell also admits that he was “struck by how Occupiers attempted to forge an alliance with the police by chanting, ‘We are the ninety-nine percent! So are you! You are one of us.’ Based on his own experiences, Campbell says that “for black and brown people, it is hard to stomach how the police are of us, regardless of their working-class orientation and occupation” (49).

Davis, Angela. "Un(Occupy) - Remarks at Washington Square Park, October 30."Occupy!: Scenes from Occupied America. Ed. Astra Taylor and Keith   Cessen. London: Verso, 2011. 133. Print. This speech was my original inspiration to learn more about this topic. According to Davis, we must “challenge language,” “transform language” and be aware of all the "resonances of the  language we use.” The last point is especially  important to Davis because the word “occupy” brings to mind the “genocidal occupation of indigenous lands”  and violent  military occupations in other countries. Davis urges Occupiers to take the meaning of the word into their own hands and change its meaning into “something that is beautiful, something that brings community together,” and “something that calls for love, happiness, and hope.” 

Mitchell, W. J. T. "Image, Space, Revolution: The Arts of Occupation." Critical Inquiry. Vol. 39, No. 1 (Autumn 2012): 8-32.  There is a very interesting analysis of what the movement stands for and how OWS is actually seeking to redefine what it means to “occupy.” Mitchell considers the word “occupy” to be appropriate because communicates an intent to intent to “occupy rather than to merely demonstrate and go home.” This movement is not a temporary, transitory gathering but the “manifestation of a long term resolve.” According to Mitchell, the movement paradoxically performed the “occupation of the world by a global system that has oppressed and impoverished the vast majority of the world's population.” Mitchell considers this to be a “reversal” of the meaning of the word “occupation” from its principal connections with “military conquest and neocolonialism.” This new occupation, therefore, is seeking to reclaim the public space for “justice, democracy, and equality.” I can definitely connect this to the end of Angela Davis’s speech, in which she urges Occupiers to redefine the wordinto “something that is beautiful, something that brings community together.” 

Patton, Stacey. "Why African Americans Aren’t Embracing Occupy Wall Street." The Washington Post 25 Nov. 2011:   Patton’s article was among the sources cited by Campbell. She outlines why it is   worth noting that certain minority groups, particularly African Americans, aren’t represented in the Occupy movement. She cites a survey that found that “African Americans, who are 12.6 percent of the U.S. population, make up only 1.6 percent of Occupy Wall Street.” She argues that the movement should particularly resonate with black Americans because they, on average, are facing  higher unemployment and other economic struggles than the average white households. This prompts her to ask: “African Americans   share white Americans’ anger about corporate greed and corruption, and blacks have a rich history of protesting injustice in United States. So why aren’t they Occupying?” The rest of the article tries to find the answer through comments made by popular commentators and media personalities. Most sources agree       that black Americans struggle with theseproblems on a “day-to-day” basis and  interesting is comedian JohnMinus’s explanation: “High joblessness and social disenfranchisement is new to most of the Wall Street protesters. It’s been a fact of life for African Americans since the beginning.” His comment follows the   logic in our Occupy! text that explained why residents of Chinatown weren’t participating in the movement.

Schechner, Richard. "Occupy Solidarity." TDR (1988-) Vol. 56. No.1 (Spring 2012): 7- 9. Though Schechner finds the attempt to find commonality between the “99%” a positive trend, he explores a lot of the  criticisms of Occupy. This article talks about the difference between “particularist” and “solidarity” movements. He cites that since the 1980s at least, there has been “no one over-arching progressive movement issue.“ He cites that many people are suspicious of the movement because it favors those  “already occupying places of privilege,” such as “educated whites, mostly urban, largely under 40.”